World's Oldest Masks Show Creepy Human Resemblance

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Billed as "the oldest masks in the world," a creepy collection of
9,000-year-old stone faces is now on display in Israel.

With stilted smiles and large eyeholes, the artifacts are thought
to have represented the spirits of dead ancestors and may have
been worn during Stone Age ceremonies and rituals, researchers
say.

Before putting the rare artifacts inside glass cases at the
Israel Museum in Jerusalem, the curators say they brought the
masks together for a comparative study. Three-dimensional
modeling showed that most of the masks could have been placed
comfortably on the face, curator Debby Hershman said. [ See
Pictures of the Stone Age Masks ]

"The eye holes allow for a wide field of vision, and the
comfortable apportioning of the mass is suited to human facial
contours," Hershman told Live Science in an email.

There are also holes on the edges of some of the
ancient masks, which may have been used to attach them to the
face. Alternatively, these perforations might have been threaded
with hair to make the masks look more human or with cords to
suspend the masks from pillars or other structures.

The masks come from various sites in the Judean Desert and the
Judean hills, according to the museum. The artifacts date back to
the
Neolithic era, when humans started giving up nomadic
lifestyles in favor of permanent settlements, complete with farms
and domesticated animals.

Two of the stone masks were already in the museum's collection;
one came from the Nahal Hemar cave in a cliff close to the
Dead
Sea and the second had been found at the nearby
archaeological site of Horvat Duma.

The other artifacts are on loan from the private collection of
Judy and Michael Steinhardt of New York. None of those objects
have a known provenance, but based on analyses of the material,
researchers think most of the masks came from the Judean hills or
Judean foothills.

The exhibition, "Face to Face: The Oldest Masks in the World,"
will be on view through Sept. 13.